Remote Control

by Nnedi Okorafor

  It came easily and it came true.

  As she lit up the road and forest in a thirty-foot radius, the leopard stopped, just at the beginning of the road. She could hear its guttural groan, as it placed a paw on the road.… and did not fall dead. She couldn’t believe it. The strength of her light should have incinerated the beast to ash, leaving only bone.

  “Why won’t you die?” Sankofa whispered. A movement to her right caught her eye. Movenpick was also standing on the road not even ten feet away, bathed in her light. “Stay there, Movenpick,” she shrieked. “Stay!” She stood up, facing the leopard. The beast had placed a second paw on the road. Today, Sankofa would die. She shined her light as brightly as she could shine it. A bat dropped to the ground beside her, dead, and she could hear the plick of beetles falling dead on the road.

  The leopard was staring at her, close enough for her to see into its large eyes. In the green of her glow, those eyes opened up like windows. Sankofa gazed into them as the leopard crept closer and for a moment her world fell away and everything was green like the full moon above and the full moon inside her. In the years since she’d left home, she had only grown a few inches. She would always be a small girl from a small town. All this she saw in the leopard’s eyes. It comforted her; this creature would send her home.

  “Ok,” she whispered.

  The leopard was five feet away. Creeping. Sankofa frowned. It was twitching and blinking its eyes, its nostrils flaring wide. Its deep growl became a loud groan. It shook its head as if its nose were itching or burning. It stood up on its four legs, swaying a bit and looked piercingly at Sankofa. Then the leopard collapsed and did not get up.

  Silence. Stillness.

  “Yip!” she heard from her right.

  “Movenpick,” she whispered, her voice cracking. For a moment, she stared at the dead leopard, then with effort, she looked down at Movenpick. Slowly, very very slowly, she reached a shaky hand down. As she did, Movenpick lifted his head up. “Oh,” she said, sniffing as tears of relief, shock and fatigue tumbled from her eyes. After so many years, the fox allowed her to touch him. The fur on his head was rough. “Who are you, my friend?” she whispered, wiping away a tear. “What are we?”

  She pulled her light in and the road went back to being merely moonlit. The moment her light winked out and she looked up the road, she was gazing at another light. It came closer and closer. By the time she realized it was a bus, yet again, it was too late, and there she stood. Thankfully, the bus driver saw the girl in the moonlit road and slammed the brakes.

  * * *

  And it was in this way that a bus filled with passengers came to witness the small girl wearing a dress of near rags standing in the road with a massive dead leopard. Several of the passengers knew precisely who this was, despite rumors that she’d finally been killed. The bus driver also knew and he quickly jumped out to see if she was ok, for if this girl touched his bus they would all be stranded. A few passengers muttered under their breath about the driver’s lack of professionalism by wasting their time helping the girl. Three teenagers recorded the entire moment with their phones and tablets and posted the footage online within minutes. Most stayed quiet and just watched through the bus windows.

  As the bus driver and three of the women talked to her asking what happened and why she was out here, all Sankofa could think about was the fact that she could no longer return to her quiet garden. People had seen her and now they would come looking for her. They would find the farmers and ask questions and maybe one of them would say something. Again, she’d reached a moment where she knew it was time to leave.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking the pink tunic and trousers from an Indian woman who insisted she have them. The woman also gave her a box of maxi pads.

  “Do you know how to use them?” the woman asked.

  Sankofa nodded. She didn’t but she could certainly figure it out.

  “And you understand what it is, right?” the woman asked.

  Sankofa nodded. “It’s my period. I’m fourteen. I’d started to wonder if … I’m glad it has come.”

  The woman nodded, smiling. “It’s good.” She cocked her head. “I’ve heard about you, Sankofa. I am here working on a drone delivery system for some of the local hospitals and stories about you circulate there. Good stories.”

  “Really?” Sankofa said.

  “Oh yes. One man had an aunt with terminal cancer who you … eased. He said you truly were like an angel.”

  One young man who didn’t want to talk directly to Sankofa gave the Indian woman a bag of peanuts to give to her. A woman who’d been on her mobile phone the entire time offered Sankofa a large bottle of water, some flip-flops and a satchel to carry it all in. A man with an American accent gave her his near empty jar of shea butter. He’d rubbed a bit on his dark chapped hands first and she couldn’t help but smile. Some of the other passengers pooled together money to give her. When the bus quickly pulled away leaving her with Movenpick (who’d leaped into the bushes until the bus was gone) and the body of the leopard, she turned and walked quickly into the bush.

  She dug up the box and without bothering to clean off the remaining dirt or checking on the seed inside, she threw it in the new satchel the woman had given her. She preened and used her watering can to water her small garden. She washed her body and her blood-stained clothes in the stream. She rubbed shea butter on her clean skin. She figured out how to use a maxi pad. She gathered all her things, deciding to leave her bloodstained clothes and watering can behind. By night, Sankofa had left yet another home behind.

  CHAPTER 10

  NEW YEAR

  They tell a story about Sankofa in many of the villages, towns and cities.

  They say there once was a living child who was born to dead parents. Because her dead parents could not care for her, they took her to Death’s doorstep and left her there. Her parents knew where this was because they were dead. They pinned a note to the child’s blanket that explained they had given birth to a live child and that only Death would know what to do with her. They said she was beautiful, dark brown–skinned and perfect in every way and that when she cried, spiders, crickets and grasshoppers would sing to soothe her. They wrote that they wished they’d had her when they were alive and that fate was cruel.

  Then they left the strange remarkable child there on death’s doorway. Death knew the moment they left her because the smell of all things in Death’s household changed. The colors of marigold and periwinkle began to appear in corners. And of course the crickets, grasshoppers and spiders started singing.

  Nonetheless, Death did not open the door. Death left the baby there. For six days. When the baby did not die, Death grew curious. When Death opened the door and saw the child, even she had to admit that the child was unique. Death took the child in and raised her until the child was seven years old.

  Death named her Sankofa because by the time the child was of age, Sankofa had the ability to send people back to their past, back to The Essence. Sankofa is The Adopted Daughter of Death. And now she goes from town to town snatching lives, sending them to her adoptive mother. You see her face and you will soon see no more. She looks nine years old because she is petite, but she is actually thirteen.

  Sankofa had once sat in a circle of young children and listened as a woman told this exact version of her own story. No one there had any idea that she was The Adopted Daughter of Death and she was glad. She’d once watched a naked mad man in a market frantically tell the story to himself. His telling made her seventeen years old. Another time, two teenage thieves told her the story as they tried to convince her that they could protect her from the powerful “remote control” of Death’s Adopted Daughter … if she agreed to be their girlfriend. In their version of the story, they tried to scare Sankofa by exaggerating Death’s Adopted Daughter’s methods of killing. They said Sankofa carried a rusty machete that magically cut deep with the slightest pressure. The real Sankofa only rolled her eyes and walked off.r />
  Some people said Death’s Adopted Daughter was riddled with leprosy. Others said she was pretty, “like an American.” Some said she was ugly like a girl raised in the bush. Some marked her as a bloodthirsty bald-headed adze, mythical vampires of the oldest stories who resulted from life’s ugliest moments. Others said she wasn’t human at all, that her blood had been tainted with radioactive gas by aliens who’d come to Earth through a black hole one night; that this was why she shined green. What they all agreed on was that wherever she went, she brought death. The only part of the shifting story that Sankofa hated was when people added the idea that her parents left her. Her parents never ever would have left her. She’d had the best parents in the world. Now, in her fourteenth year on earth, if there was one rule she lived by it was the fact that Stories were soothsayers, truth-tellers and liars.

  She knew where she was going now. As New Year approached, she moved faster and more directly. When she needed rest, she stopped in towns and villages along the way. She accepted gifts. And though asked many times, only twice did she ease people into soft deaths. And only once did she kill in defense, days before, on Christmas night—a gateman whose mind was poisoned by the wild rumors that preceded her. She met more farmers and they were almost always kind, and when they weren’t, they at least knew to stay out of her way. She had no other trouble. And Movenpick had finally decided she was worthy of his full trust, coming close to sleep beside her at night, finally, and always following from a slight distance when they travelled during the day. No one gave Movenpick any trouble, either.

  * * *

  Sankofa arrived at the border on New Year’s morning. She was wearing her long yellow skirt, matching top embroidered with expensive lace and a purple and yellow headband made of twisted cloth. She’d acquired another simpler green wrapper and top and had worn that all week, saving this one from Christmas for the day she entered Wulugu. She wanted to arrive in style.

  The trees looked different. So did the road. It was so black that it looked like it led to another dimension. The stripes on it were so yellow that they looked like the paths of shooting stars. But this was the road that led into the town of Wulugu. At least what used to be Wulugu. Who knew what Sankofa would find here? Even at this hour, the road was busy with autonomous delivery and transport trucks and personal vehicles. She stood to the side of the road remembering. Not a mile away was the place where her normal life had ended.

  “We’re back,” she said to Movenpick, who stood right beside her. She could see the top of the mosque in the distance up the road, so there was still something left. “Let’s go home.”

  Her stomach was growling, but she was too excited to care. As she walked, old darkened memories tried to sneak into her mind, her mother’s face, her father’s voice, her brother’s laugh. Her heart fluttered and she shut her eyes as she walked. The feeling passed and she was happy again. Movenpick trotted at her heels like a dog.

  * * *

  There were still ghosts in Wulugu and Sankofa was relieved. She felt them as she strolled into town, lingering in shadows, between buildings, on front steps. Reminders that everything that had happened truly happened, no matter how much had been covered up, rebuilt, replaced, reorganized. As she came up the road and approached the mosque, she passed several people leaving it. She recognized no one and she was glad when no one recognized her. And she was glad Movenpick stuck close.

  She passed a small and very empty market area. This place looked the same, though it wasn’t. The old table outside a closed restaurant where in the evening men would sit outside and play cards and smoke cigarettes was still there. She wondered if it still had the same purpose. The narrow dirt road that ran through town was now paved with fresh asphalt and used by people on foot and on bicycles instead of cars.

  There was joy in the air. And beyond the homes and buildings on the right were the shea tree farms, Sankofa knew. A few years wouldn’t matter much to trees; if anywhere looked the same, it would be the shea farms. She stopped at one of the random shea trees that grew in the town square. She stepped closer. Carved into its trunk was “#AfricansAreNotLabRats”. She ran her hand over it, wondering who’d taken the time to carve it. Probably someone who’s long moved on, she thought.

  She passed Wulugu’s biggest hotel and, now twice the size as it had been, it was much nicer than she remembered. It even looked like it now had running water and more generators. And there was a very new-looking pharmacy attached, a big advertisement for LifeGen nasal spray in the window. Sankofa stopped at this, frowning. She glanced up, surveying the sky.

  Two dark-skinned tall women dressed in stylish western jeans, T-shirts and gym shoes and with long perfectly coiffed dreadlocks came out of the hotel entrance, giggling as they looked at their mobile phones. When they noticed Sankofa they grinned. “Good morning,” they said to Sankofa, walking in the direction she’d come from. They had American accents. Why were Americans here?

  “Good morning,” Sankofa said, smiling back.

  “Cute dog,” one of them said. She held up her phone, took a photo of Movenpick and then they both were on their way. Sankofa watched them go for a moment and then she moved on.

  * * *

  When she reached her home and knocked on the door, no one answered. Instead, the door swung open and the smell of dust and abandonment wafted out. She stood there looking inside, Movenpick beside her. If she’d needed even one hint of what had transpired in Wulugu six years ago, here it was. Every single home she’d passed up to this point, every single building, every booth in the women’s market, the bicycle shop, everything was occupied. Different faces, different families, but people. Except this house.

  Sankofa looked at Movenpick. “They’ve tried so hard to move on,” she muttered. Across the street, she eyed a woman sitting on her porch watching her. She waved and smiled and the woman slowly waved back. Sankofa had no idea who that woman was. The house itself hadn’t even been there when she left. She went inside.

  The house had been gutted. Every piece of furniture, every rug, her brother’s collection of wooden carvings, old photos, everything. It was just an unoccupied home now. Left to crumble back to the dust it came from on its own. However, for Sankofa, it was full. Right there was where her mother used to sit and listen to audiobooks on her mobile phone when she could get it to work. Right there was where her brother would lay out the pages of his school assignments and work his way meticulously through them until dinnertime. Right there was the spot in the kitchen where his father would make a pile of the best shea fruits that fell from the tree in the backyard, the tree that was not a farm tree, but the family tree.

  And in the back of the house was the family tree that Sankofa used to secretly climb and hide in for hours. It was taller now, and wider, its branches healthily green with long leathery leaves and unripe plum-sized shea fruit. At its base was where the seed had fallen on her “sky words” and later the box had been pushed through the soil.

  She gasped, realizing. “My ‘sky words,’” she whispered, brushing a sandaled foot over the dirt where she used to draw them. She hadn’t thought about them in over a decade. She blinked. “Did my drawings bring the…” She frowned and decided it didn’t matter. Not right now.

  Sankofa slowly walked up to the spot before the tree. She knelt down. Movenpick trotted past her and easily climbed up the rough trunk and sat on a thick branch. With her small hands, she started digging. There was only one place on Earth where this thing would be at rest, where this thing would allow her to rest. The red soil was soft, yielding and moist as her fingers dug into it. She inhaled its fragrant aroma, feeling herself begin to glow. Above, the tree seemed to lean over her. Her fingers dug deeper into the soil and soon, she felt something beneath it. Solid, but moving. She did not pull her hands away. Instead, she let it firmly grasp her hand.

  The tree’s root, a brownish reddish thing, snaked up. With her free hand, Sankofa reached into the pocket of her worn pink pants and brought out the bo
x. The root wavered before her and then stopped, waiting.

  “What are you,” she asked it. “The devil? A demon?” An alien? She blinked, knowing this was true. Knowing that her “sky words” were at least part of why it had come here, to this specific spot. How she’d been able to see and duplicate what she saw in the stars was a question she’d ask herself for a long time. “Fatima,” she said. “My name is Fatima Okwan.” But I’m Sankofa, too, she thought. Always. “Fatima,” she said again, and the faces of her father, mother and brother shined brightly in her mind for just a moment before fading back to the washed-out images they had been since she’d left.

  She cast the box into the hole and spat on it. “Stay there. I don’t want you. You weren’t a gift, you were a curse.” Her shoulders slumped as she felt something leave her. The waiting roots slid almost lovingly around the box, their roughness grating softly against the box’s wood, a sound Sankofa would remember for the rest of her life. Then their grip tightened, crushing the box and seed. She saw the seed inside crack in two just before it all descended quickly into the dirt, pulled down by some force Sankofa would never fully understand.

  Sankofa felt her legs weaken and she sat down in front of the hole and stared at it. She looked past the hole, at the tree. She looked past the tree and only saw the farm. For a moment, she recalled her father walking in from the farm, a sack of personally picked shea nuts over his shoulder. He always used these ones to make the shea butter his family spread on their skin. Her heart ached.

  She put down her satchel and stretched out on the ground, flat, her face to the soil. For an hour, she sat facing the tree, remembering and remembering. No mental walls. No turning away. Her body softly glowing.